Expertise in the analysis and the optimization of chemical reactions catalysed by metal complexes is offered by a Spanish University.

The research group belong to a Spanish centre of higher education, on which, nearly 25,000 students enroll each year and more than 2,600 lecturers are employed, and nearly 1,000 people work with administration tasks. This university offers 29 doctoral programs, 13 of them are interuniversity programs. The organization manages around 180 research projects per year funded through international and national competitive public R&D (research and development) grants. Approximately 500 contracts and agreements, aimed at the transfer of knowledge and technology, reach an average of over 15,000,000 euros per year. Moreover, university researchers are involved in almost 250 projects and contracts managed by other institutions. In particular, the research group has previous experience in the management of several competitive R&D projects, financed by international and national public organizations. The research group is focused on the study of transition metal catalyzed reactions. These are widespread synthetic methodologies which, however, have to be carefully adapted to each new set of reagents. There is a large set of experimental parameters that have to be stablished to perform successfully the reactions. The usual approach is to translate the experimental conditions that have been described in the scientific or patent literature for similar chemical structures. Since the miss-adjusting of one single parameter jeopardizes the catalytic cycle, this strategy very often heads to poor performance of the synthetic reaction. The research group has the instrumentation and the skills to in situ monitor the reaction by “operando spectroscopy”, analyze the data by reaction progress kinetics analysis (RPKA) methodology, and define the critical conditions that have to be improved to benefit the synthetic result. The analysis of kinetic parameters and the use of microkinetics allows to determine which are the concentrations, solvents and temperature required to reach the highest efficiency of the catalyst reaction, the optimization of the chemical yield or the optimization of the yield versus time, solvents or reagents consumed. The group is interested in collaborating under research cooperation agreement with research groups working in multi-catalytic processes in organic synthesis. Fine chemicals industries, including pharmacological, agrochemicals, food chemistry, parfums, dyes, additives, and others are sought as partners under commercial agreement with technical assistance and/or technical cooperation agreement.